I nod. “I think so. I hope so.” My stomach flips.
Father offers me his arm. He is very frail, but charming. “Miss Gemma Doyle of Belgravia, I presume?”
“Yes,” I say, laying my hand upon his, my arm at the proper angle to my body as I’ve been taught. “If you say so.”
We wait in the procession with the other girls and their fathers. We’re all as nervous as new chicks. This one checks to be certain her train is not offensively long. That one holds so tightly to her father’s arm I fear he shall lose the use of it. I do not see Felicity yet but I wish I did. We strain our necks for an early glimpse of the Queen on her throne. My heart is beating so very fast. Steady, Gemma, steady. Breathe in.
We move forward by excruciating inches, the courtier calling the name of each girl in the procession. One girl wobbles slightly, and word snakes back through the line in terrified whispers. No one wishes to be singled out.
“Courage,” Father says with a kiss, and I wait my turn to be alone in the chamber of Saint James’s Palace. The doors are opened. Down at the end of a very long red carpet sits the most important woman in the world, Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. She is rather stern in her black silks and white lace. But her crown sparkles so that I cannot look away. I am to be presented to Queen Victoria. I shall proceed as a girl and return as a woman. Such is the power of this ceremony.
I feel I shall faint. Oh, I shall be ill. Stuff and nonsense, Gemma. You’ve faced worse. Stand tall. Back straight, chin out. She is but a woman. Indeed she is—a woman who happens to be Queen and who holds the entirety of my future in her wizened hands. I shall be ill. I know it. I shall fall upon my face and live the rest of my days, disgraced and odd, in a hermitage in the south of England, accompanied by fourteen cats of varying size and color. And when I venture out in my old age, I shall still hear people whisper, “There she goes…the one who fell….”
The courtier calls my name, loud and strong: “Miss Gemma Doyle!”
The longest walk of my life is under way. I hold my breath as I travel the stretch of carpet, which seems to lengthen with each step. Her Majesty is a solemn monument of flesh and blood in the distance. She is so very like her portraits that it is startling. At last, I reach her. It is the moment I have both wanted and feared. With as much grace as I can muster, I lower myself like a soufflé falling in upon itself. I bow low to my Queen. I do not dare breathe. And then I feel her tap upon my shoulder firmly, compelling me to rise. I back slowly from her presence and take my place among the other girls who have just become women.
I have done what they expected of me. I have curtsied for my Queen and made my debut. This is what I have anticipated eagerly for years. So why do I feel so unsatisfied? Everyone is merry. They haven’t a care in the world. And perhaps that is it. How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage, for that matter.
Lord Denby is suddenly at my side. “Congratulations,” he says. “On your debut and on that other matter. I understand from Fowlson that you were quite magnificent.”